Is Netflix’s Lost Girls Based on a True Story?

YupLife Staff
Is Netflix’s Lost Girls Based on a True Story?

The most anticipated Netflix’s movie Lost Girls is going to release today. While most crime stories focus around the event and ultimately lead to some kind of regulation being met, or the mystery being solved, ‘Lost Girls’ offers none of the two. The film narrates a horrifying tragedy and focuses on a mother’s extreme efforts to bring justice to her daughter. Keep reading to know if Lost Girls based on a true story.

Lost Girls Based on a True Story

The film explains the tale of a mom, Mari Gilbert, whose 24-year-old daughter Shannan Gilbert goes missing. Mari starts on a mysterious mission, backtracking Shannan’s last public appearances and running her own inquiry to an isolated gated area near the abandoned outer shores of Long Island.

Lost Girls Based on a True Story

Her hunt to find her girl at all costs drives her to reveal more than a dozen unsolved killings of sex workers. Her hunt finally leads the police to the most terrifying murders of the past decade that remain mysterious.

Shannan Gilbert
Shannan Gilbert

Yes, ‘Lost Girls’ is based on mortifying real-life disasters and contributes a much-needed exposition of the regularity that’s expected to protect us. The Netflix story is inspired by Robert Kolker’s 2013 book, Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery, which narrates the story of five sex-workers that were slain in Long Island whose offender was never recognized.

Netflix crime movies

The book, much like the movie, can be regarded as part crime story and part recognition to the victims and their families. It reflects the account of the victim’s loved ones, and follows the life of each of the sufferers, from her childhood to her missing. Netflix’s ‘Lost Girls’ focuses around Mari Gilbert’s mission as a real-life mom who lived through the disaster, until she met her own.

Mari Gilbert

As Mari urges the police to investigate, a body is located. But it’s not Shannan’s. Neither is the next, or the next, or the one after that. In a matter of a year, about 10 bodies are discovered, only after which Shannan’s body is found. And her death is declared accidental. Despite the 23-minute 911 call she made before she went missing, her death is not attached to the Long Island serial murders. But Mari proceeds to struggle against the system to deliver consideration to her daughter, and in the struggle unites with the family members of other victims.

Netflix Lost Girls

Long Island Serial Murders

The Long Island serial murders, also known as the unsolved Gilgo Beach murders, refer to manslaughters of 10-16 people over approximately 20 years. Most of the sufferers were women affiliated with prostitution, and all of their bodies were discovered in the South Shore of Long Island. Apart from Shannan Gilbert, the victims include Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, and Amber Overstreet, all of whom were sex-workers. Each one of their stories and missings has been outlined in Kolker’s book.

Is Netflix’s Lost Girls Based on a True Story?

These crimes get noticed because of Mari Gilbert whose 24-year-old daughter suddenly went lost in Oak Beach. Despite the disinterest shown by authorities, she urged the administrators to investigate the incident which eventually led to many bodies being discovered around 2010 and 2011. The police, though, assumed that some of the deaths could have taken place years earlier.

Is Lost Girls based on true events?

The bodies and parts discovered around the South Shore mostly belonged to women, but there were also remains of a man and a toddler discovered in the area. Most of the victims were in their 20s, and at least 5 of them served as sex-workers. While there have been many men supposed to be the Long-Island Serial Killer, the real killer never got identified.


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